


Broken Beetle, Broken Heart

by GothicDeetz



Category: Beetlejuice - All Media Types, Beetlejuice - Perfect/Brown & King
Genre: Caring, Childhood Trauma, Comfort, Dreams and Nightmares, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, One Shot, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:14:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26549572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GothicDeetz/pseuds/GothicDeetz
Summary: When Betelgeuse has a nightmare, the Maitlands provide comfort to him and Delia helps him out by explaining the meaning of his nightmare.
Relationships: Beetlejuice & Adam Maitland & Barbara Maitland, Beetlejuice & Delia Deetz, Beetlejuice & Lydia Deetz, Beetlejuice & Lydia Deetz & Adam Maitland & Barbara Maitland, Beetlejuice/Adam Maitland/Barbara Maitland
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	Broken Beetle, Broken Heart

Betelgeuse wasn’t normally a sleeper, like the Maitlands, but that didn’t stop any of them from sleeping whenever they felt like it. It was a surprisingly stormy April night, around 2am, when Betelgeuse encountered one nightmare of events in the past that he so desperately wished to forget ever happened. He rocketed awake, panting, whimpering, and nearly awakening his ghostly lovers who he’d been with for the past five months from the first peaceful night of slumber they had had in a month. 

He tried to go back to sleep, but the terror that came with what was happening in his long nightmare kept him up and awake. He tried tossing and turning but couldn’t stop after twenty minutes. Giving up, he rolled over so he was facing Adam’s back and tapped it to wake him up. 

The male ghost awoke in a millisecond, turning so he was looking at Betelgeuse. He could see the fear in the demon’s eyes and the violet in his hair, reaching a hand out and placing it on the demon’s shoulder. 

“Something wrong, Beej?” he mumbled tiredly, sitting up and motioning Betelgeuse to sit up as well. Betelgeuse nodded and they got out of bed, leaving Barbara to feel colder than she usually was. She awoke as well and looked over towards her two male lovers.

“Nightmare?” she asked knowingly, getting out of bed to go over and see what was wrong.

“Yeah,” Betelgeuse replied quietly, the violet disappearing from his hair and being replaced by a mix of orange, grey, and white.

Barbara reached out and stroked Betelgeuse’s mossy beard. “B, I’m sorry to hear that. What was it about?”

“Lydia. She’d taken the form of my mom and kept on stabbing me with that bad art of Debra’s. It felt so traumatizing, I couldn’t fall right back asleep.” The demon looked down and grabbed a hold Barbara’s hand for comfort. She gripped onto it at exactly the same time and gave it a small squeeze to let him know everything was okay and his hair became a mix of pink and green. 

“Oh... dear. We’ll have a talk with Delia about this tomorrow, the three of us, and we’ll see if this had something to do with the trauma of past events.” 

Betelgeuse nodded slowly and added, “I kinda promised Lydia we’d hang out tomorrow morning so maybe after. If that’s okay with you.” He looked down as he said that last part, his hair becoming violet once again.

“That’s totally fine with us, Beej. We don’t mind waiting till tomorrow afternoon.”

Both ghosts smiled softly, wrapping their cold arms around the demon. He slowly melted into their embrace, the color of his hair becoming a swirled pink and yellow. He felt at ease, comforted, happy. And they headed back to bed to hopefully sleep the rest of the night away peacefully and together in each other’s embraces.

The morning came and went in a flash and was unusually quiet for a change. Gone that particular morning was the noise of the chaos that Betelgeuse and Lydia would usually cause every morning on a daily basis. Instead, the two opted to spend time together in Lydia’s room, looking through photo albums and making crafts (which were bound to get messy). All four adults found that strange, the lack of chaos that very morning. Lydia wasn’t on spring break for nothing.

The Maitlands appeared in Lydia’s open doorway and watched the two best buds work on a giant birdhouse (what was the purpose of it and why were they making it? The Maitlands were left with over a dozen questions running through their minds). They just stood there as silently as a deceased couple could be, careful not to make too much noise until the right moment came up. 

“No, Bj! That piece doesn’t go there and you know it!” Lydia laughed as she removed the out-of-place piece of the roof from the wall facing her almost as soon as Betelgeuse fixated it there with his powers. Betelgeuse pouted at her and put a piece of the floor where the roof piece had been. “That piece doesn’t go there either silly! Stop that!”

“I hope that we’re both not interrupting anything not too chaotic,” spoke up Barbara, the first words spoken by either Maitland in the fifteen minutes they’d been standing there silently.

“Nono, it’s fine,” Lydia said, turning her attention away from the giant birdhouse and onto her ghostly parental figures and guardians. “You guys can both come in if you want. You’re not interrupting anything. Betelgeuse has been at this all morning long, putting pieces where they don’t belong. It’s amusing at the same time annoying.”

“Is that because he’s reading the instructions upside down and sideways?” asked Adam, pointing at Betelgeuse.

Lydia turned to look over towards Betelgeuse, sighed, and let out of a laugh. “Of course he is!” she groaned. “Beej, turn those the right way up and read them correctly.”

“Lyds, you seem to have forgotten that I can’t read. And these instructions are so much more easier and to read the way I was reading them,” teased the demon.

“Dumbass!” She stuck her tongue out at him.

“Hey!” 

“What?! That’s true!”

“What do you guys need a giant birdhouse for anyway?” asked a confused Barbara in an attempt to calm them down, raising an eyebrow. 

“Sandy the Sandworm!” replied Betelgeuse with a smirk. “She needs a house!”

“She’s much too big for a house that size,” Adam had to point out, gesturing a hand towards the unfinished birdhouse that was left sitting in the middle of Lydia’s bedroom floor in pieces. 

“Nah!” said Betelgeuse and Lydia at the same time, immediately going back to working on the birdhouse.

“Anyways,” Barbara said. “We talked to Delia earlier and she wants to talk to you in the living room about the meaning of your nightmare from last night.”

“Is it the afternoon already?” asked Betelgeuse, not looking up as he once again attached a roof piece to one of the walls of the birdhouse and annoying Lydia yet again. 

“Beej, it’s one in the afternoon. Delia’s been waiting to talk to you for the past hour,” said Barbara. 

“Shit!” He sprung up suddenly, nearly breaking what he and Lydia had already accomplished with their birdhouse. “Sorry, Lydia,” he apologized. “We’ll continue working on this later, okay.”

“I don’t mind,” she said. “In the meantime, I’ll just do something else whilst I wait for you to finish talking with my stepmother.”

Betelgeuse nodded and left the room with Adam and Barbara.

He sat on the couch with Delia next to him, a book open on her lap. The Maitlands had both decided not to interfere with this particular conversation, instead opting to do something of importance in the kitchen. Delia didn’t seem to mind, she said it was okay. Betelgeuse wasn’t hardly listening to Delia as she spoke, resting his hand against the back of the couch and his chin as he watched the Maitlands work away together in the kitchen. 

God, their love for doing stuff by hand was more than likely one of the many reasons why he fell in love with and got together with them. He loved doing things with his hands as well, especially if it was murder (which he was not allowed to do as one of the rules that came with his returning to the house, much to his disappointment).

“Betelgeuse? Are you listening to me?” the chipper voice of Delia’s interrupted his train of thought and snapped him back to reality.

“O-oh-oh... sorry ‘bout all of that, Debra. I was uh... uh distracted!” He looked away from the Maitlands and turned his attention back over towards her. “What were you saying?”

“It’s Delia,” she said for the umpteenth time. Although she was used to Betelgeuse getting her name wrong everytime he spoke to or addressed her, she still wanted to remind him of her actual name. She had to admit, she didn’t mind that Betelgeuse got her name wrong. Where would the fun in it be if she stopped correcting him? “And I was in the middle of explaining to you what nightmares that dealt with traumatic events of a person’s past meant.”

“I’m not a person though, I’m a demon.” He stopped to cough rather loudly, annoying Delia. “Ahem... continue.”

“Thank you, Betelgeuse.” Delia smiled at him and started over with her explanation. “A person may experience a nightmare of traumatic events in their past whenever something traumatic happens to them. Ranging from stuff they did not want to see to stuff that has haunted them for over a while. Betelgeuse, has anything traumatic happened to happen to you in the past week?”

Betelgeuse shook his head. “No, Delilah. The last traumatic thing that happened to me was after I tried to force Lydia into marriage and she stabbed me with that bad art of yours as well as all the abuse I endured from my mom for centuries and centuries.”

“Ah, I see.” Delia smiled. “It seems your brain is mixing both of those and turning it into one nightmare. Is it reoccurring or a one-time thing?”

“One-time thing.”

Delia nodded and continued to read. The Maitlands, who were done with whatever it was they were doing in the kitchen, came over and joined them. They both leaned over the back of the couch, Barbara playing with his hair and making it turn a shade of rosy pink.

Betelgeuse relaxed at her touch, closing his eyes and resting his head against the back of the couch. He was so relaxed, he didn’t hear Delia trying to get his attention.

“Betelgeuse, are you listening to me? Betelgeuse?”

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked this one shot. Comments and kudos are appreciated. :).


End file.
